Danbury police ticketed 17 percent more drivers in 2018

DANBURY - If you got pulled over driving in the Hat City in 2018, you were not alone.

The city police department pulled over 6,900 drivers in 2018 - a 14 percent increase over the previous year, according to new data.

And of those drivers stopped, police officers wrote 4,700 tickets - a 17 percent jump over 2017.

The jump in traffic stops was not the result of a City Hall directive or a new police department policy, Mayor Mark Boughton said.

Instead, the increased activity was the result of the police department’s traffic division being fully staffed and active, he said.

The increase in traffic enforcement contributed to a busy 2018 for the police department, which saw major crime rise 4.7 percent over the previous year. That increase was driven mostly by an increase in car theft, which increased 60 percent over 2017.